Comments

David Davidson on 2 July, 2009 at 2:37 pm #

A person must pick 5 numbers from a number pool (1,56), and then must pick a number from a separate pool (1,46), and all numbers have to match.

1 in 56! / (56 – 5)! * 46 is the odds of winning once, or

1-in-21 085 384 320

That works out to roughly 1-in-2 * 10^10

To win it 10 times (in a row or ever, it doesn’t matter because it’s random chance) would be the odds raised to the 10th power, or:

1 in 2^10 * (10^10)^10
1 in 1024 * 10^100

Those aren’t the exact odds (the odds are actually much worse, 1.7370615706 * 10^103), but to put it in perspective:

If a mega millions drawing was held every millisecond (a thousandth of a second) and 1 person had a ticket for every drawing, it would take them 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000 lifetimes of the universe to win 10 times.


Diane M on 5 July, 2009 at 2:14 am #

Mega millions to none!


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